Ragosina makes history

Female supermiddle star wins heavy belt

By Alexey Uralets (ringside) and Alexey Sukachev

Natascha Ragosina (22-0, 13 KOs), Russian best and only world boxing champion, pulled off a Roy Jones-like performance and followed his path by jumping over the 175lb weight division to capture some championship regalia as a full-fledged heavyweight. The historical effort was witnessed yesterday by visitors of DIVS palace of sports in Ekaterinburg, Russia, as a part of the event, presented by Ulf Steinforth’s SES Boxing in association with German Titov and Kirill Pchelnikov. In fact, Ragosina weighed-in at subtle 172 lbs, which, however, hasn’t prevented her to fight for the vacant WIBF heavyweight belt. Her opponent Guyanese Pamela London (6-4-1, 1 KO), though several inches shorter than 6’0’’ blonde Ragosina, was at career heaviest 236 lbs. The weight difference resulted in the same correlation between their mobility and agility inside the squared circle, which was well shown throughout the whole contest.

The Russian fighter, who also owns a huge variety of belts as a super middleweight, controlled the panzer-like London with a frequent jab, adding some left hooks on her way out and her way in. London answered with nothing except for horribly wide and misguided punches. Ragosina, on the other hand, boxed wisely, not letting her foe to create any danger, circling around and peppering the Guyanese without a break. Sensing the fight is here for grabs; Ragosina increased both the tempo and aggression in round seven and pounded London at the ropes during the last minute of the stanza. In round eight, the multi-champion waited a bit and then connected with a chilling right hook to the temple, which had the Guyanese down face-first and being counted out by referee Alexander Kalinkin, despite taking an upright stance at the end of the count.

WBO #3 and IBF #4 light middleweight Lukas Konecny (41-3, 20 KOs) moved further a bit to his second world title opportunity with a workmanlike decision against Belarussian veteran Sergey Khomitsky (21-7-1, 8 KOs) over ten rounds. It took WBA #11 heavyweight Denis Bakhtov (32-5, 21 KOs) just 15 seconds to take out badly shot Latvian Edgars Kalnars (20-22, 11 KOs) with a single right hook. Bulgarian Ilian Ares (17-2-1, 8 KOs) wasn’t able to stop game journeyman Sergey Starkov (16-54-2, 8 KOs), cruising to an uneventful eight-round decision. Uzbek Ilhom Rakhimov (6-0, 4 KOs) added the name of tough journeyman Sergey Yurovskikh (6-8-1, 1 KO) to his resume following a heated eight-rounder.